***Aaaand, WE are carbon-based creatures***
Decades ago, 1980 or so, someone asked Carl Sagan(COSMOS) why carbon and not silicone?
Basically he simply said we are carbon based creatures and that was the way it was.
There are times when I read the Bible that I'm amazed at it being ahead of its time. One of the passages that makes me think that is Genesis 2's description of God creating Adam from the dust of the earth (perhaps why we're carbon based). Note that this was centuries before the ancient Greeks declared that everything was made of 4 elements (earth, air, fire, or water) and Democritis' early atomic theory. Which was centuries before our modern atomic theory and the periodic table.